


Winter, That's All

by NearlyThornless



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rating May Change, Snowboarding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29781690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NearlyThornless/pseuds/NearlyThornless
Summary: Reki and Langa spend a week in Canada, and it's not that Langa is bad at teaching him how to snowboard - it's just that Reki is a little distracted.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 10
Kudos: 118





	Winter, That's All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, I finally wrote a little something about those two. It's probably going to be three chapters and I'm not sure yet whether or not to up the rating or keep it pure? we'll see I guess. 
> 
> the title is inspired by the song by bedroom walls. 
> 
> hope you enjoy. (:

The sky was reminiscent of an ocean, turned around on its axis. As far as Reki looked, there was nothing to see but snowy mountaintops, needle trees with layers upon layers of fresh and older snow on them, branches bent like tired arms. But high up as they were, even the trees were a rare sight - it was just him, the sunlight reflected in the snow, the occasional skier or snowboarder passing by, a clear blue sky and Langa. 

And a black sign. 

"This isn't funny, Langa," Reki complained, keeping his eyes on the scenery and off the almost 90 degrees drop in front of them. He wasn't exactly terrified of the mountain, but they'd only been practicing for two days and no sane human being would even consider going down that run. 

Not that Reki was of the particularly sane kind. Not when it came to skating anyway, but this was different. His feet were attached to the board here, his ass cold from sitting in the snow, and he felt utterly... out of his element, still. 

Especially in comparison to Langa. 

When his best friend had slyly suggested that Reki could maybe come along when he visited his grandparents in Canada, Reki has first written it off as a casual idea that probably wouldn't work out. He certainly hadn't expected Langa to go out of his way and work an extra job at the post office just to afford the two of them their tickets - in fact, Langa had kept his mouth shut about that and Reki had maybe been a little bit annoyed with the fact that Langa had spent noticeably less hours a day with him. 

Up until one evening, when he pulled out the tickets and grinned at him, asking, "So you're coming with me right?" 

Of course Reki said yes. 

Of course Langa's grandparents were the loveliest people ever, as far as Reki could tell from the broken bits of English he caught from them. 

And then, of course, the two of them ended up with boards attached to their feet the very first day here. Reki had maybe expected some hesitation from Langa, some sort of blockage when it came to snowboarding, because his best friend was always a bit tight-lipped when it came to his past hobby. But instead, watching Langa get onto the snowboard and go down the mountain was like watching an animal being released into nature. 

Langa had been doing this from age three, and it showed. 

It showed in the way his eyes held a little extra sparkle, in the way he laughed after doing a particularly dangerous-looking jump, and it showed in how great he was at teaching Reki. Because, admittedly, Reki wasn't making this as easy for him as Langa had, when Reki had taught him how to skate. 

It was a strange sort of irony that Reki considered hard and unforgiving asphalt twenty shades safer than the soft white snow that surrounded them here. But then again, maybe it wasn't. Unlike Langa, he wasn't used to the snow, had only ever experienced winter in the city, which meant a few centimetres of muddy brown snow and maybe ice that people slipped on. Nothing like this.

"You don't want to?" Langa asked, frowning at the practical abyss in front of him like he struggled to understand why Reki had his doubts about this.

"I don't want to break my neck," Reki replied, looking the other way. He wasn't one to back down usually, and it felt weird, admitting that he was a little spooked at the sight of the black run. 

"You wouldn't," Langa told him, tone certain, "We can go down another one. I just thought you'd want to try. You're learning very fast." 

Reki almost couldn't handle how sincere he sounded about this, when he felt like the opposite was true. He glanced at Langa, at his incredibly well-fitted dark grey skiing jacket, his sunglasses reflecting the image of his own insecure expression right back at him. In the bright white light of the afternoon sun, Langa looked even more unreal than he did in everyday situations, walking through the supermarket or reading a magazine. 

Reki shook his head, clearing his thoughts - sure, his best friend was a sight for sore eyes, but sometimes he was a bit afraid of how often he caught himself analysing the curve of Langa's lips, or wanting to touch his hair at random moments. Or thinking about how even the glaciers and the clearest of lakes here had nothing on the brightness of Langa's crystal-clear eyes that were sadly covered by sunglasses but -

He changed his mind. 

Maybe going down the black run was a good idea. A great idea. Adrenaline had a way of helping him get rid of the panic that he felt when those types of thoughts got a little too loud. Reki could hardly count the times when he'd caught himself watching Langa a little too closely and then, skated extra fast, extra risky. That usually worked to shift his focus back onto where it was supposed to be. 

A board with four wheels, on the asphalt. 

Or, right now, one without wheels, sliding across the snow. 

"Alright then," he said, didn't even wait for Langa to catch up. 

Snowboarding felt entirely different; Reki could feel the snow beneath the board give way to the wood, was acutely aware of the way that shifting his weight affected the board directly, without wheels in-between to distribute the changes. Perhaps the biggest change was that with a snowboard, there was no such thing as going straight down, forward, not for him at least. 

Not on a black run. 

Not when driving in curves, he already felt the board gaining entirely too much speed. 

"Reki," he could hear Langa calling from somewhere behind him, but Reki wasn't exactly in a state to turn his head when the snow beneath his board suddenly felt more like a frozen puddle than fresh snow from last night's storm, and he found himself making an utterly unmanly sound, suddenly convinced that this was it. He was going to tumble down the mountain like a human-shaped avalanche, all because he couldn't handle standing up there and looking at his best friend whose looks were right between pretty and handsome. 

Not even the adrenaline helped those thoughts anymore, apparently, because the faster his board got, the more of it flooded his bloodstream, and the last thing he was going to see before his death would be white and white and - 

Suddenly, his hand was grabbed, and before Reki could even tell what was happening, he was spun around in a tight circle, pretty much flying for a few seconds and holding his breath as his chest heaved with the unplanned pirouette. 

When he came back down to earth, he was sitting in the snow, with Langa right behind him, still holding onto Reki from behind, their boards nearly touching. 

"You were going too fast," Langa told him, sounding breathless. 

"I- ah. The snow was -" Reki began, but then it happened again. Another one of those little mental blackouts that seemed to be occurring more and more often, and Langa was very close to him like this, which definitely wasn't an issue because the two of them were pretty much always close; they'd shared a bed more times than Reki could count. 

So why in the world did that seem like the most natural thing for the longest while, until his head suddenly decided to make a big deal out of it? 

Reki couldn't even pinpoint when that had happened.

Maybe at one of those times when Langa had made that 'I can't look' face at a little scratch, maybe at one of their sleepovers where Langa had fallen asleep first and Reki had the opportunity to look at his face for a while without anyone but himself judging him, or maybe when Langa showed him the tickets for the both of them to come here together or ... 

"Reki? Are you hurt?" 

He turned around slowly, biting his lip.

"The snow was...," he started again, and Langa had taken his sunglasses off, his eyes the brightest shade of blue and concerned at Langa instantly studied his face, looking for a sign of pain or maybe... something. Reki couldn't even tell anymore what those looks meant that they sometimes shared. 

Or rather than that, he had this sneaking suspicion that they meant something else to him than what they actually meant. 

"..Frozen," he finished, lamely. 

Langa's brows scrunched together, but his voice remained calm. Smooth, without a hint of accusation. "I didn't think you'd just ride ahead like that, the sun didn't reach the part over here yet, so it's still frozen. And it's so steep that the fresh snow doesn't give you any grip." 

"Ah, right. It's.. different. Roads aren't like this. They're always pretty much the same, some are just smoother than others," Reki uselessly said out loud, but Langa nodded his head nonetheless before brightening up a little and pulling his sunglasses back down over his eyes. 

Reki mourned that fact for only a second. 

"On second thought, this is only your third day snowboarding. Let's go down the steep part together, okay? And then we'll come back to this when you feel a little more secure on the board," he suggested and Reki nodded his head, slowly. 

"What do you mean with together?" he asked, banning a flashback from the two of them sharing one skateboard from his mind. The thought wasn't helping any, and he actually needed to focus. 

"I'll show you," Langa said, and then he was up again, his arms no longer around Reki. Just as his heart was recovering from that, Reki suddenly found a hand locked with his, Langa doing another little half-circle and stopping just beneath him. 

"First of all, we go over there slowly. Come on." 

And because every fibre of Reki's being was alight with nothing but trust for his best friend, he didn't even question for a moment that Langa could get him down this hill smoothly. He tried to keep his eyes on the snow instead of their intertwined hands as the both of them made their way out of the shadows and back onto a somewhat less scary-looking part of the ski run. 

"Now we just go like this," Langa said and before Reki had a chance to ask what 'this' was, Langa's hand was guiding him forward and around, only to stop beneath him. 

"Like an S," Langa explained, "just small curves until we're down there." 

He nodded at a little plateau beneath them, and Reki mirrored the head movement, "Okay." 

It was borderline shocking just how well Langa's plan worked out, but then again, it really wasn't. For every bit of clumsiness that encompassed Reki's movements on the board he wasn't used to, Langa had that extra bit of experience that easily balanced it out when Reki stopped a little too late or slid down the hill a little bit. 

Maybe, if he wasn't so preoccupied with the feeling of Langa's hand in his, his ego would have been a little bruised at the idea of needing assistance with this, but as things stood, that was the furthest thing on Reki's mind. 

Of course the two of them were wearing gloves, what with the ice cold air despite the sunshine, but somehow that didn't do anything to dull the feeling of Langa's hand holding his own steadily, offering that certain bit of confidence that Reki knew he wouldn't have without his best friend by his side. 

Best friend - yeah. 

Reki wondered whether there was such a thing as working together a little too well to be best friends when Langa kept encouraging and praising him for his slowly growing confidence on the board. 

Despite how scary the hill had seemed, Reki found himself almost a little disappointed when the two of them had passed the most dangerous part and Langa told him, "You can manage from here, right?" 

"Right," Reki said, and just like that, they let go of each others hand. 

They spent another two hours snowboarding after that, easier runs that Reki definitely enjoyed much more, and just before the sun was setting and the lifts stopped running, Langa even went out of his way to teach him little jumps and tricks. 

By the end of it, Reki felt muscles aching in his legs that he hadn't even known existed, because obviously this wasn't the same as skating. Skating helped with it, for sure, and it could probably be a whole lot worse, but Reki still found himself groaning in agony as the two of them eventually wandered up the snow-covered road to the little house where Langa's grandparents lived. 

"It'll get better," Langa said. Reki felt sweaty beneath his thick jacket and his board was heavy, carried on his back, but he still found himself believing Langa. 

He wondered for a moment what it would have been like, had he not come along and was instead sitting in his room at home right now, unable to just call Langa and tell him to come over and skate. Boring, probably. A little sad, too. Sore muscles weren't that big of a deal, compared to the idea of that, and besides, snowboarding was fun.

A little scary and unusual for him, but fun nonetheless. 

And the way Langa's ice blue hair was lit up with hints of orange from the breathtaking sunset behind the mountain surely did help. Reki found himself staring for a long moment, wondering if things were always going to be like this. With the two of them together, no matter where in the world, no matter what they were doing. 

Just, doing it together. 

It was almost unnatural, how quickly he'd found himself attached to Langa like this, panicking at even the thought that something could potentially get in between that kind of future for them. But of course, all kinds of things could happen. From getting a job and having to move to either of them getting a girlfriend, to a random fight - so many things could tear a friendship apart. 

"Are you okay?" Langa asked, "You haven't complained about your muscles or made a pained noise in more than a minute." 

"Hey! I'm not complaining," Reki defended himself, fastening his pace a little to keep up with Langa's somewhat longer legs, "But I can if you want me to. I'm hungry. And I want a bath. And don't think I've forgotten that black run stunt you pulled, you totally knew that I was -" 

"Scared?" 

"Hah? I mean, no, I wasn't scared. But it was still scary, okay? Not everyone grew up sliding off of mountains." 

Langa looked stunned for a moment before he laughed, and god did that look picturesque. His nose scrunched up a little and his eyes were narrowed, and once again Reki had his strange urge to touch him. His hair, his cheek, his shoulder - anywhere. 

A little smile pulled at his own lips. 

Nothing was going to ever get between them, not if he could help it anyway. Those little moments were more precious to him than any job, his pride or his ego could ever be. So far, they'd pulled through anything life had thrown their way after all.

"And don't worry about being hungry, I'm sure my grandmother is just dying to make you eat until you feel like you're about to explode again." 

"Sounds perfect," Reki said, because there was obviously nothing like a grandmother's cooking, and he'd loved anything she had made so far. He hesitated for a moment before saying, "Thanks again, Langa." 

"What for?" the taller boy asked, taking the shortcut through some of the higher snow to his grandparents' house. Reki followed, snow scrunching beneath his own boots. 

"I don't know, working an extra job to buy us the tickets? Teaching me how to snowboard, and letting me stay with your grandparents?" Reki counted, but Langa only turned to look at him with wonder. 

"You don't need to thank me, it wouldn't be as much fun without you," he said like it was the most obvious thing, and Reki's heart gave a painful little thud. Honestly, something had to be wrong with him - there was no reason to feel so overwhelmed just because Langa could say things like that in such a Langa-like, honest and blunt way. 

But then, for a split second, Reki could swear that he saw a hint of color on pale cheeks. 

Maybe that was wishful thinking or maybe just the sunset, but before he could inspect it further, Langa had turned back around and started walking a little bit faster. 

It took them only two more minutes until they arrived at the house, and to Reki's disappointment, there was a handwritten note on the table saying something about a bingo night and that the two of them could order pizza (which was great, honestly, but it would take another hour or so for that to arrive). And... 

'Make use of the privacy, you can thank me later for dragging your grandpa out of the house for once. We should be back at around 10, just so you know.' 

And a winky face. 

Either Reki's English was seriously off, or Langa's grandmother had just casually implied that... 

Reki was still standing there in his long underwear and sweaty t-shirt, staring at the piece of paper with an open mouth, when Langa walked into the room behind him. 

"Oh, they left a note?" 

"Yeah.."

He didn't move when Langa looked over his shoulder, read the note. 

For a long second, the both of them were dead silent. Reki didn't dare to turn around, because this surely had to be a misunderstanding, cultural difference, an inside joke. Something. 

"Oh my God," Langa whispered then, and Reki turned sound to find him facepalming, "that woman can't just - ugh." 

"Did she - ah. I mean, she has a funny sense of.. Humor?" 

"Humor, right," Langa muttered and the second his hand left his face, he wandered off, not giving Reki a chance to analyse the look on his face. In fact, Reki wasn't even sure where he'd wandered off to, so he just yelled into the general direction, "I'm taking a bath," and went to grab himself a towel out of the laundry room, heading for the spacious bathroom. 

Only for his eyes to fix squarely on his best friend's very much bare chest, thumbs beneath the sides of pants and for a long moment, Reki couldn't decide what was worse. The fact that he'd just run into Langa who was about to take his pants off, or the fact that he hadn't been ten seconds later and - 

Right. 

He needed to stop staring, definitely. His face felt like it was going to go up in flames any moment now. 

"Did you want to shower first?" Langa asked after a few seconds of silence. 

Reki shook his head slowly, pointing at the bathtub next to the shower, "I wanted to - You go ahead, I'll wait my turn." 

Reki faintly realised that this shouldn't be so awkward. They were best friends, they'd seen each other cry and laugh and sleep and - 

Well. Langa's chest shouldn't look that smooth either. It shouldn't capture Reki's interest like that because he'd seen it multiple times in the summer and it really was just a chest, just his best friend's chest, just his weird little issue where he saw nice things and wanted to touch them and Langa was a very, very nice thing with his hair slightly messy and his fingers still hooked into - 

Just as he was about to move his legs and relocate his crisis to the hallway, Langa said, "You can take a bath while I shower. I don't mind." 

And just like that, with that permission, the world stopped turning for a moment and Reki's balance felt a little off so he held onto the doorframe behind him. 

That... was normal, right? Not minding it when your friends were naked. So what did it mean that Reki didn't exactly find a hint of normal in that proposal? 

"Reki?" 

"Yes?" he asked, too fast. 

"I said you can go first if you want to. I don't mind that either." 

"No! We can.. yeah. That way we're done faster, I mean," he said and they shared one of those looks that could mean anything or nothing. 

And then Langa stepped out of his pants and Reki's mind echoed with a chorus of, 'don't look, don't look, don't look, don't ~' 

And before he could look, Langa had pulled the shower curtain closed behind him and a part of Reki was utterly.... disappointed. 

Wait.

Disappointed? 

He was making this weird. He was making all of this so, so weird. And it was so hard not to, when his best friend looked like a cross between an angel and a model, when he was fine with showering when Reki was in the same room, when holding his hand felt special even with gloves on. 

He turned the water on, and the bathtub was slowly filling up while Reki prayed that it would be full before Langa could step back out of the shower. He added some bath salts, some shampoo, and watched the water turn a blueish color. 

"I think in a few more days, you'll easily be able to do higher jumps and go down much steeper runs. I mean it when I say that you're learning quickly," Langa told him over the sound of the water and Reki tried his hardest not to think about the fact that Langa was naked in there. In a shower, in a foreign country, where he could have taken anyone to with him, but he chose Reki. 

Langa just kept doing those things, and Reki couldn't even blame him for not noticing what it had been doing to him lately. Maybe from the beginning, even, but it was becoming more and more obvious. 

That Langa was the type of person to treat his best friend like the most special thing in the world and Reki - he looked at Langa like he wanted to be a little bit more than just a special best friend. 

These days, there wasn't really a way around realising that anymore. No matter how much he told himself that it was something else, a part of Reki knew exactly what it was. 

It was hard not to catch feelings for someone who fitted into his life so perfectly, shared his passion, lit up his life like it was second nature to Langa. 

And now Reki was in the process of messing it all up by sinking deeper and deeper into more than friendly emotions, like drowning in quicksand and inevitably putting a strain on what they shared. He needed to stop it, needed to get back to his usual self that was obsessed with skateboarding and skateboarding only. 

Needed to reply. 

"Can't let you beat me after all. You went up in S after practically no training at all. Compared to that, I'm super slow," he said, finally pulling his clothes off and testing the water with one foot. 

Too hot. He wrapped a towel around his lower half, just in case.

"Reki," Langa complained, but there was no follow up.

He turned the cold water up a little and waited, only to suddenly become acutely aware of the fact that the shower wasn't running anymore. 

And then, a pale arm reached out for the towel next to the shower. Before Reki could think any better of it, he found his eyes stuck to the breathtaking figure of Langa, with a dark green towel hanging low on his hips, and his hair wet, drops running down his torso. Reki followed one of them with his eyes, as if hypnotised, and he wondered just when the room had become so steamy. 

"You're anything but slow, Reki. Everyone's progress is different and you know that- oh watch out." 

Reki's mouth fell open as Langa was suddenly very, very close, turning the water off. Reki's eyes were slow to follow, and he only realised then that the tub was just short of filled to the brim. 

"Oh, oupsie?" he laughed, scratching the back of his neck. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Langa eyed him suspiciously, as if he suspected that Reki had a sunstroke or a concussion. When really, he hadn't fallen that many times. 

"I'm fine, you worry too much," he managed to get out, more than a little overwhelmed with the amount of skin currently on show. Reachable. So very touchable. 

Langa's lips were a soft shade of pink, and if Reki had a sunstroke, he might have been brave enough to just go for it and press his own to them, drag his fingers through Langa's hair, whisper something stupid and true into his ear afterwards. 

But, he didn't have a sunstroke. Clearly. 

So instead, Reki just smiled at him, warmly. It was true that Langa worried too much, and after his initial layer of aloofness and coolness, Reki had long since found so much more. 

"What pizza do you want? I'll just order them now, that way we can eat after your bath." 

"Right," Reki confirmed, thinking back to that note. Privacy. How he wished that Langa's grandmother's joke would be anything more than a bitter irony. He shook his head, "which one do you get?" 

"Peperoni?" 

"Then get me a margherita, we can share." 

"Alright," Langa said and for a moment, blue eyes seemed to linger. Reki watched him open his mouth and close it, before Langa stood up and walked out. 

Reki spent almost an hour in the bathtub after that, thinking about snowboarding, and skateboarding, sunstrokes and courage. 

It all lead back to Langa, of course. Like it inevitably did. Maybe the bath salts were getting to his brain, but Reki found himself wondering what it would be like to date Langa. To hold his hand not because they were practicing snowboarding, but because they fitted together nicely. To shower not in the same room with him, but with him. To share a bed and not awkwardly shift a little further away from him before he woke up, because it wouldn't be weird to be all tangled up in each other. 

Reki couldn't tell whether his bath was relaxing or stressful with those thoughts running through his head and before he knew it, Langa was shouting for him from the kitchen, because apparently, their pizza had arrived. 

As he dried his skin with the soft towel, he wondered if he even stood a chance at all with his best friend, if Langa was even into guys, if he was maybe into anyone else. And if there was any better place and time to try and somehow figure it out than in a snowed in little cozy house, where the night was slowly enveloping the mountains in darkness.


End file.
